Following whistleblower Edward Snowden’s leaks of National Security Agency documents pointing to mass online surveillance, both Facebook and Microsoft have released details on the number of legal orders made to them by the NSA.

Only a few days after revelations of the surveillance program
known as PRISM, which alleged major companies such as the social
networking giant Facebook and software maker Microsoft, as well
as others, had provided the NSA direct access to their server
data, both companies released statements denying such
involvement.

On Friday both Microsoft and Facebook released more information
regarding requests made by federal, state and local police in an
effort to reassure users. The new information provided by
Facebook and Microsoft detail the number of legal orders they
received to disclose user data.

According to Microsoft, in the last six months of 2012 it
received between 6,000 and 7,000 criminal and national security
warrants, subpoenas and orders affecting between 31,000 and
32,000 consumer accounts.

Facebook, meanwhile, has divulged a similar number of requests
during the same period of time.

“For the six months ending
December 31, 2012, the total number of user-data requests
Facebook received from any and all government entities in the
U.S. (including local, state, and federal, and including criminal
and national security-related requests) - was between 9,000 and
10,000. These requests run the gamut - from things like a local
sheriff trying to find a missing child, to a federal marshal
tracking a fugitive, to a police department investigating an
assault, to a national security official investigating a
terrorist threat. The total number of Facebook user accounts for
which data was requested pursuant to the entirety of those 9-10
thousand requests was between 18,000 and 19,000 accounts,”
said Facebook.

According to Facebook, then, the number of data requests made by
law enforcement and intelligence services represent a
“tiny fraction of one percent
of our user accounts.”

Along with other implicated companies, such as Yahoo and Google,
Microsoft and Facebook sought greater leeway from the government
to disclose information regarding secret court orders compelling
them to hand over user data, ostensibly in the interests of
national security.

According to James Clapper, head of US national intelligence,
Internet companies implicated under the PRISM program were
receiving legal orders sent to them "pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act." In theory, judges must
evaluate whether a request is "reasonably designed" to exclude
Americans.

Without exception all of the companies tied to the PRISM leak
maintained that they were only complying with orders made under
the FISA Amendments Act, which established certain limits placed
on a Bush-era warrantless surveillance following that scandal. Of
course, critics argue that such courts are hand-picked and merely
rubber-stamp requests that enable mass surveillance.

One such critic, retired US District Judge Nancy Gertner, told a
panel discussion on constitutional privacy protection on Friday
that the selection process for federal judges serving on such
secret courts is extremely biased.

“It’s an anointment process.
It’s not a selection process. But you know, it’s not boat
rockers. So you have a [federal] bench which is way more
conservative than before. This is a subset of that. And it’s a
subset of that who are operating under privacy, confidentiality,
and national security. To suggest that there is meaningful review
it seems to me is an illusion,” says Gertner.